Dungeon Siege III Review

Date: 6/29/2011

By Ned Jordan

Dungeon Siege III may be the third game in the series, but it’s the first to
appear on consoles. In spite of its PC heritage, though, this hack-and-slash
dungeon crawler is very much a console style game. In fact, in spite of its
Dungeon Siege heritage this game doesn’t have a whole lot in common with its
predecessors.

I can remember Dungeon Siege as being one of the first action-RPGs, or RPGs
in general for that matter, to disavow character classes in favor of a system
that used your play style to shape your character. For example, if you used bows
a lot your character would become more and more efficient at archery, without
the need to be classified as a hunter or similar class at the start of the game.
Dungeon Siege III completely forgoes this philosophy, giving you the choice of
one of four possible pre-rolled and skill-set-locked characters. Three are
aligned with the typical RPG archetypes of a melee and a ranged fighter and a
mage, with the fourth being a more unique hybrid with elemental powers and
acrobatic melee skills. The limited choice offered to players is a consequence
of the fact that Dungeon Siege III is far more story-focused than its
predecessors. The four available characters each have an important role to play
in the game’s story that goes far beyond the typical “anonymous adventurer saves
the day” storyline (which is something that the first two games in the series
served up for story). In fact, the game ventures a bit into BioWare territory,
giving your character some choice in how he or she responds during conversations
with NPCs and providing plenty of opportunities to read additional sources of
lore that fill out the game’s world and its story. Conversation “wheels” allow
you to make your own choices on how to respond to NPCs, and your choices do have
a minor effect on the story. Not enough so to warrant multiple play-throughs,
though; overall the game is pretty linear. But enough about how Dungeon Siege
III is not Dungeon Siege or Dungeon Siege II, let’s leave it at that and spend
the rest of our time together looking at the game as its own original
action-RPG.

When you get down to it action-RPGs are really about two things: hack-n-slash
fighting and loot. Let’s start with the hacking. Not surprisingly you’ll be
making extensive use of the attack button, but Dungeon Siege II adds a bit more
to the formula beyond pure button-mashing. First of all, each character has two
fighting stances that you can switch between on the fly with a press of the left
bumper. Each stance has its own set of attacks, so picking the right one in
response to the current battle situation is a big part of the game. For example,
in one stance the ranged character wields a rifle and can pick enemies off at
long range. However, this is not an effective tactic when enemies press close,
so it’s far better to switch to her other stance in which she wields dual
shotguns. The shotguns do not do as much damage to enemies as a shot from the
rifle, but they can hit multiple enemies at once and knock them back a bit to
give you some breathing room.

Each character also gets a set of nine potential special abilities. Six are
offensive and tied by threes to each stance, and three are defensive and
available regardless of stance. As you level you’ll have the choice of spreading
your upgrade points among all of these abilities or to spend those points making
just a couple of them more powerful. In this way there’s some chance to
customize each character to suit a particular play style, but in practice your
choices won’t have a serious impact on the gameplay – it’s not like there’s
enough leeway here with nine abilities for you to create new and unique hybrid
classes in the game. The abilities are mapped to up to three of the face buttons
(A is permanently dedicated to the default attack button), and holding the
trigger will switch between the offensive and defensive abilities. Before you
can use one, though, you’ll have to build “focus” through your basic attack, and
when you do use one you’ll drain that focus.

The game likes to throw mobs of enemies at you and it’s easy to become
quickly overwhelmed if you try to hold your ground against them. If you’re
familiar with MMORPGs, you’ll feel right at home trying to manage crowd aggro
and kiting enemies away from the mob. You also need to be careful not to get
cornered, and not just for the obvious reason. When you’re backed up against a
wall and mobbed by enemies the camera zooms in so closely you won’t be able to
tell what’s going on, and unless you have a knockback ability that will allow
you to try and blindly make a run for it you’re as good as dead when this
happens.

Loot is a big part of the fun in an action-RPG, and unfortunately the loot in
Dungeon Siege III is simply disappointing. Each weapon, accessory, or piece of
armor is tied to a specific character – you’ll even see a portrait of the
character that can use a piece of loot superimposed on it when it drops – and
each item of a particular type looks pretty much exactly like every other item
of that type. When you go to equip something you’ll see some pluses and minuses
indicating the stats affect by the equipment change, but that’s it; your
character will look the same after you equip the new gear. Furthermore, outside
of perhaps the armor rating and damage ratings, all those extra plusses and
minuses don’t have any perceptible effect on the game.

As you make your way through the game you'll encounter the other three
characters that you didn't select at the start. They'll join up with you
under AI control and do a relatively decent job of holding their own against
your enemies. You'll be able to select their equipment and their upgrades
when they level up, but there's no mechanism for controlling their tactics or
anything like that. If you want a better partner, you can play two-player
co-op. It's not true co-op in the sense that it becomes a two-player RPG,
but rather in that the second player takes over for the AI character.
Still two-player can certainly be more fun than single-player - as long as you
can manage to stick close together to avoid camera issues. If you go
online you can increase the player count to four, with each player taking on one
of the game's four unique characters. Four player online play is a bit odd
in that it's only the host that really has a character that will persist beyond
the online session. Other players are there just for the ride and once
they exit will have nothing to show for their efforts. And if you think
you have camera issues with two players, wait until you try four...

Final Rating:
69%. A few too many problems to recommend to
anyone but hardcore hack-and-slash fans, but even they're going to find the
game's loot underwhelming.